Twentieth Century America was the
force that defeated the Axis of Evil and stopped the spread of Communism. It
seemed that America was a country willing to put the principals of Democracy
and the betterment of the world above its own well-being. However, a closer
look at American foreign and domestic policies since 1940, would reveal an
entirely different picture, one in which foreign policy was driven by
capitalism and corporations and the government used misinformation like
fighting the spread of communism to further their capitalistic goals.
The Atomic bomb, the thing that
ended the Second World War and saved millions of American lives is the story
that American students are taught since grade school, but it is also one that
has gone through countless rewrites since Potsdam in 1945. The A-bomb for
President Truman was more than just an end to the war in Japan, it was his way
to thrust America to the forefront of Global politics and deny the Soviet Union
the promises made by former President Roosevelt.[1]
Truman understood the potential benefits an atomic monopoly would bring to the
United States and so he pushed back the summit at Potsdam for two weeks until
the first successful test, the A-bomb was now a diplomatic tool.[2]
On the 16th of July 1945 Truman received the news he was hoping for,
the first successful test of the Atomic Bomb, The Trinity test was more of a
success than anyone had hoped for.
Courtesy of picturehistory.com
Courtesy of picturehistory.com
In the months leading up to Potsdam
and the dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Japan, the Japanese government made
known its willingness to surrender. In March the U.S. Army Air Force had begun
Nighttime bombing campaigns using incendiaries to burn Japan’s paper cities. In
Tokyo, these bombing campaigns destroyed 16 square miles and killed over
100,000 civilians, the result was worse in other cities like Toyama were the
bombs destroyed 99.5% of the city.[3]
As a result in following month Japans Supreme War council meet to discuss
surrender. Japan hoped to get the Soviet’s help in brokering surrender to the
U.S., their only request was to preserve their imperial system.[4]
Entering Potsdam, Truman knew of the
Japan’s willingness to surrender but still did not take the A-bomb off the
table. A single atomic bomb was capable of leveling entire Japanese cities, but
the U.S. Army Air Force had been destroying Japanese cities with their nightly
bombing campaigns since March. None of this mattered to Truman, because to him
the A-bomb was so much more than an end to the war, it was a way to make Japan
surrender on American terms and as Joseph Stalin put it; a way for America to
“dictate terms in Europe”.[5]
In order to win over public support for dropping such a devastating weapon,
Truman went on a campaign to distort the facts and inflate the casualty rates
of an allied invasion of mainland Japan. What started off as thousands of dead
skyrocketed to multimillions of dead for an assault on mainland Japan.
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| courtesy of aboutjapan.japansociety.org |
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| courtesy of awesometalks.wordpress.com |
At the end of the war Europe was in dire straights financially, but in America the economy was booming and many American businessman feared the “consequences should Europe adopt economic spheres closed to American trade and investment”[6], in short they feared the spread of communism. Communism meant more than the end of freedom and democracy in the country that adopted it; it meant the end of American corporate influence. Russia and communism now became America’s greatest treat and America would go to great lengths to stop it, even if that meant propping up brutal and unpopular extreme right-wing regimes. Nowhere was this more prevalent than South America, which the America felt fell directly within its sphere of influence.
The United Fruit Company possessed a
fifth of all the arable land in Guatemala, a country where the majority of its
population went hungry and lived well under the poverty line.[7]
In 1950 Colonel Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán was elected president, promising massive
land reforms, including nationalizing over 200,000 acres of land from United
Fruit, which Guzmán offered to pay $600,000 for.[8] This Youtube.com video explains the situation. Even though Guzmán had no connections with Russia or its Soviet Government,
Eisenhower’s Secretary of State declared that the country needed to be saved
from “communist imperialism”[9].
Under this guise the U.S. deposed President Guzmán, replacing him with an American
backed Castillo Armas who quickly established a military dictatorship. Armas
would return all of the land to United Fruit seized by Guzmán government.
The same thing was attempted in Cuba
when Fidel Castro’s Revolutionary Government began to pass legislation to reduce
the ill effects that the American controlled monopolies had on the country.
Fidel, “began to be called a communist”, and his government “began to be
painted red”[10].
To protect American corporate interest, the American government proclaimed
Castro and his government Soviet backed Communist enemies of America, who had
to be overthrown. What was not mentioned by the Eisenhower or even the Kennedy
administration was that fact that leading up to the Cuban revolution large
portions of the “banking business, importing business, oil refineries, sugar
production” and “the lion’s share of arable land”, as well as “the most
important industries in all fields in Cuba belong to North American companies.”[11]The
CIA attempted many times to assassinate Castro in order to replace him with a
American backed leader, who would place America’s corporate interest above the
welfare of his own people. Again the American government had falsely labeled a
leftist leader communist as a means of getting rid of him, because he placed America’s
capitalist interest in danger. This was just however a lead up to Vietnam,
where America’s capitalist world interest would collide with a country
attempting to throw off the repressive shackles of western corporations.
French controlled Indochina had
begun a communist revolution to try and free itself from France. With no real
ties to the Soviet Union, Indochina, known as Vietnam, posed no real threat to
America’s world interest. However, as President Lyndon Johnson pointed out,
“Indochina is a rich prize”, because it was rich with tin and manganese
deposits[12],
raw materials that America wished to control. When France withdrew from
Indochina the country was split in two, between the communist controlled north,
and the capitalist south led by French backed Bao Dai. Bao Dai was a problem
for the U.S. prospects of controlling Vietnam[13],
so like many times before the United States orchestrated his removal. Dai was
replaced with Ngo Dinh Diem, a conservative catholic with many friends in
America. Under Diem, South Vietnam witnessed a regime of oppression. President
Kennedy had vowed not to become involved in Vietnam and promised not to send in
ground troops, but after Kennedy’s assassination LBJ had other plans.
Ironically, in 1964 Johnson ran on a campaign that stated, “We are not about to
send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from to do what Asian boys
ought to be doing for themselves”.[14]
However by April Johnson sent an additional 40,000 soldiers to Vietnam and in
three years he had increased the total number of troops from 75,000 in 1964 to
525,00 in 1967, he vowed the he was “not going to lose Vietnam.”[15]
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| Courtesy of www.dangerouscreation.com |
No matter what is campaign rhetoric
might have been it would seem that President Johnson wanted Vietnam. This can
be seen from how America became involved in the conflict to begin with, The
Gulf of Tonkin. To the American people The Gulf of Tonkin was an attack on
American ships by the belligerent North Vietnamese; in reality in was nothing
more than mistake caused by a nervous radar operator, for Johnson it was chance
to escalate things in Vietnam. Johnson and Secretary of Defense McNamara
fabricated the event at Tonkin to gain the support needed to bring thing in
Vietnam to ahead.[16]
Lyndon Johnson did not want to be the president known as an imperialistic
warmonger, he wanted to be known as “the President who educated young
children…who helped to feed the hungry…who helped the poor to find their own
way and who protected the right of every citizen to vote in every election.”[17]
However, with America’s increased involvement in Vietnam, Johnson could not
afford to start the social programs at home, wars cost money and Johnson was
throwing heaps of it into the war department. Johnson was in fact the President that signed both the Civil Rights Act of 1965 as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.
The Johnson administration was not actually concerned with steaming the spread of communism in Vietnam, nor was it worried about bring democracy to that poor south Asian country; “tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw material are what the war is really about”, and Johnson saw “it as a place to hold at any cost”[18], including his hopes for domestic social changes. Like the many Presidents before him, Johnson propped up and secretly founded unpopular right-wing governments throughout South America to combat regimes that threatened American corporation and as a result were labeled communist.
The Johnson administration was not actually concerned with steaming the spread of communism in Vietnam, nor was it worried about bring democracy to that poor south Asian country; “tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw material are what the war is really about”, and Johnson saw “it as a place to hold at any cost”[18], including his hopes for domestic social changes. Like the many Presidents before him, Johnson propped up and secretly founded unpopular right-wing governments throughout South America to combat regimes that threatened American corporation and as a result were labeled communist.
Throughout the remainder of the
twentieth century American Presidents continued to wage a secret war against
any force it deemed hostile to America’s capitalist driven foreign policy. They
continually regarded anything government who upset the long standing status quo
of American corporate imperialism as hostile and communist and spent large
amounts to oppose the. From Reagan and Iran-Contra to Bush and the elusive
weapons of mass destruction, the American government continually hides the
truth of its agenda abroad, usually at the expense of the American people.
